The first step in solving this puzzle is figuring out who served each pasta dish, and when. There are a number of possible logical paths to follow, but the grid should look like this. Note that the grid is given in alphabetical order by cook, since the eleven cooks’ names start with the first eleven letters of the alphabet.
| Cook | Round 1 | Round 2 | Round 3 | Round 4 |
| Audie | Lumache | Anelli | ||
| Boris | Elicoidali | |||
| Claude | Tempesta | Cannelloni | ||
| Drew | Stelline | Sagnette | Rotelle | Lumache |
| Eustace | Ditalini | Anelli | ||
| Flora | Orecchiette | Rigatoni | ||
| Greg | Manicotti | Stelline | ||
| Hestia | Orecchiette | Stelline | Penne | Lumache |
| India | Rigatoni | Cannelloni | Penne | |
| Jackie | Sagnette | Rigatoni | Penne | |
| Klaus | Elicoidali | Anelli | Rotelle |
Reading down the first letters of the Round 1 pastas gives the phrase LET’S DO MORSE, in reference to Morse code. The pastas used in this puzzle are all either small soup pastas (roughly dot-shaped) or long short-cut or stuffed pastas (dash-shaped).
Since Audie’s two pastas are both soup pastas, they give two dots, which translates to the letter L. If we continue. treating each cook’s pastas as dots and dashes, and each cook as their own letter, we get .. – .- .-.. .. .- -. ..-. — — -.. , which translates to ITALIAN FOOD.